(Untitled)

[dherblay]

Also (this time from Joyce Wadler's Boldfaced Names):"What up, G!" shouted MARISKA HARGITAY, elegant in a sleeveless black and white polka dot gown, at ICE-T at Entertainment Weekly's Academy Awards viewing party at ELAINE's.

"What up, gangster!" Mr. T responded.
To be fair, Boldface Names is as much an ironically distant comment on gossip columns

Comments

[nzraya]

Unless, of course, Mr. T was also present.....perhaps as Ice-T's date.

[dherblay]

But it wasn't boldfaced! So it had to be a reference to a person already mentioned!

[nzraya]

Ah! I missed the finer points of formatting. Further proof that I am a texty person not a visual person....

[cwx]

Wow... it never occured to me where the British press habit (ok, I've seen it in The Economist and BBC News Online so I just assume they all do it) of using Mr/Ms was inexorably leading to!

Anyway, I've always figured that in the American style where you just use the last name with no honorific on second mention (is that the word for it), the short version of a rapper's name (stand-in for the real last name) wouldn't always be the last word in their name. Like "Cube" would be okay but I would say "Snoop" rather than "Dogg." I can't think of any other good examples right now... but you're right, I would stick with Ice-T even on second mention.

(Can you tell I enjoyed this topic and think about this kinda thing too much on occasion?)

[dherblay]

Oh, this provokes all sorts of well-worn quandries, and not just in hiphop. For example, Muddy Waters is often alphabetized in record shops under W, while Howlin' Wolf is shelved under H. There's just no way I can reconcile that. And Professor Longhair goes under P!

I don't know of any rapper who fits with the "Muddy Waters" paradigm (feel free to help me out), though I kind of think that Busta Rhymes should.

And I'm reminded of the episode of NewsRadio guest-starring Chuck D, in which Chuck recognizes Dave as Dave because he's the only person who'd be earnest and polite enough to call him "Mr. D."

another example

[anomster]

Yeah, the possibility of confusion w/that "other" Mr. T adds to the ridiculosity of it all. Certainly hyphenated names shouldn't be treated as a 1st & last name. Not to mention that in a hiphop context, that should've been "What up, gangsta!"

Waaaayyyy back before I lived in New York (so at least 25 years ago), I tried to find The Autobiography of Malcolm X at the Montgomery County (Md.) public library. The 1st place I looked, naturally, was under X. Not there. I thought maybe it was shelved by his "last name" in the sense of the last name he used--Shabazz. Nope. I finally asked a librarian. I think s/he found it cross-referenced in the card catalog. He was listed as "Little, Malcolm." Whoever made the decision probably considered it his "real" name, but of all the possibilities, Malcolm X would have rejected that one as being the slave name he gave up (that's why he used the "X"). I actually wrote a letter to the library dept. making that point, & they changed it. I suggested shelving it under "X," where I'd looked for it in the 1st

[lynnmonster]

*snickers uncontrollably*

[dherblay]

Control yourself!